


Sticks and Stones

by dich0tomi, DuskyDawn7



Series: Sticks and Stones [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Animal Death, Blood, Body Horror, Demonic Possession, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Journal Bros AU, Mental Breakdown, Nightmares, Vomiting, minor gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:09:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4744115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dich0tomi/pseuds/dich0tomi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuskyDawn7/pseuds/DuskyDawn7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being buried for thirty long years in the ground, Drei is dug up by a mysterious boy named Dipper Pines. With his new found freedom, he will do everything in his power to find his brothers and make his family whole again. However, there are forces greater than anything he's ever faced before trying to use him for their own gain. It's a race against time to not only fix his family, but possibly save the world from destruction as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Buried

It was pitch black. There was nothing surrounding you except for the encroaching earth that was piled tight on all corners. You are completely and utterly alone, the only thing to keep you company being your thoughts.

Eins?

Zwei?

You call out to your brothers day in and out, but never do you get a reply. It had been like this for some time now. The details are fuzzy, but all you remember is a man burying you in the ground. It seemed like you were being thrown into a shallow grave, though you don’t know why. You’d never done anything to wrong someone, at least not intentionally and neither had your brothers. The only thing you could think of that led to all of this was the vague, yet frightening thoughts of a golden triangle peering down at you with a single eye. The image of the being sends shivers down your spine, both figuratively and physically. There’s no telling what this otherworldly creature could mean, but you know it isn’t anything good.

Time begins to crawl to a stand still. You lost track of what time it is, what day it is. You don’t even know what year it is anymore. All concepts of time passing have stopped having meaning. All there is is you and the six corners of earth suffocating you. There’s no room to turn into a human to try and break the stagnation. You have only your thoughts. You feel like crying, but no tears come. Your ink only bubbles and runs before being quickly dried by your numerous pages. At some point, you can’t even make yourself do that. You sit in the same position, never moving; forever stuck in a pit you can’t escape. This will be your grave.

Eins?

Zwei?

No response.

You’ve come to accept your fate; doomed to stay in a pit without any inclination as to why or how you got there in the first place. It’s almost peaceful in a sense. You no longer have to worry about what your life may have been like before this. Sure, you’d much rather have your brothers and memories, bu- No. You can’t even lie to yourself. There is no upside to this, though you will still contend that the silence had become a welcome friend as opposed to a hated enemy. As you dipped further into the bowels of insanity, you could find some comfort in knowing that it was starting to feel less like a death sentence and more like a tranquil resting place. Every once and a while, you’d feel signs of life above you. Footsteps of those outside your prison would occasionally flatten the earth just enough to where you knew there was something above. There would be the odd whisper in hushed voices, but not often. Whatever was above usually passed by alone or stayed quiet. The voices kept you from going completely off the deep end.

On one particular day, there’s a lot of activity from above. The unmistakable sounds of footsteps patter on a mere few feet on the surface. At first you think nothing of it. Why should you? Everyone up to this point had walked right on by without ever knowing of your existence. They simply have no way of knowing that buried beneath a pile of dirt, there’s a journal beneath the ground. You only give the noise your attention for the same reason you’d always had-to keep yourself sane. It’s only until you hear mechanical like noises that gives you pause.

Gears turn. Rough ground shifts. As you continue to listen to the footsteps to get an idea as to what is happening, the solid earth above you begins to split apart. What once was cold earth is replaced by a thin sheet of metal. For a moment you think you’re hallucinating, but the clear indentation of the ground above proves otherwise. This isn’t fake. Maybe you’ve spiraled down so far that you can’t even tell the difference. Regardless of what your mind may or may not be dreaming up, one undeniable fact is that something changed. Just as you feel yourself becoming tempted to turn human so you can paw at the metal sheet, the sound of metal scraping against metal invades your small grave. With utter shock you watch rays of sunshine beam down into the darkened abyss, unearthing you for the first time in what felt like centuries. You felt like crying.

The source of the footsteps soon reveals itself when a young boy cautiously walks over to you. Frozen in both fear and shock, the strange boy picks you up, blowing off some of the dust that had built up on your cover for decades. You feel his pulse. Flesh and bone all working together to form cohesive movements. A heart that pumps blood to vital organs to keep him alive. Memories of once taking on your human form flood your thoughts, reminding you how much you’d missed being able to move of your own accord. Being able to speak, move, touch…It meant you could make your own choices, but more importantly, it meant you wouldn’t be forced to stay buried.

The gentle breeze tickled at your cover and spine. The sunshine reflected off the hand print emblazoned on your front and made very light shimmers on the human’s face. Noises of wildlife sound off all around you. For the first time in many years, you can feel something that isn’t the ground or your own depressive thoughts. You feel alive.

Looking to your savior, you get the strangest feeling that you know him somehow. You know you’ve never met this kid a day in your life, though there was an air of familiarity about him. His clothes are strange and don’t match what you remember was in style before being left to the worms. The only thing that looks remotely recognizable is the shape of a star on his hat. Still, even with that said, he’s eerily familiar. You get the feeling you can trust him despite having never interacting with him before. It feels comforting.

With the freedom to move in your old human form, you can’t stop yourself from fighting the urge to change. In the blink of an eye, your book form is now replaced with that of a human in their late teens. You don’t even have to look at yourself to know you’re filthy. You can feel it. Being dropped to the ground by the boy holding you, you let out a grunt as the boy let’s out a shrill scream that echoes for miles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the brain child of both I and Dich. My first multi-chaptered fic and I hope it will be successful and everyone will enjoy it to some capacity. Will be updated sporadically due to school starting.


	2. Out of the Past

Sitting at the kitchen table with the first streams of the morning sun peering in through the window, you find yourself covered in food crumbs. In front of you there is a plate of half eaten waffles doused in syrup. If someone were to look at it, they may think you were a light eater, but in reality this was your third helping and you showed no signs of slowing down. You'd forgotten how good food tasted and even though you don't need it to survive, you wouldn't deny the vast array of different types and flavors made you want to stuff as much in your mouth as possible.

Meanwhile, sitting across from you over the table was Dipper; the boy in the woods who had saved you. He cleaned you up, gave you a roof over your head, and fed you. He didn't even ask for anything in return other than to read more from your pages which you didn't mind at all. It was a nice setup, one you wouldn't trade for much at the moment.

But Dipper wasn’t the only great thing about this place. There was another, his sister, who you knew to be named Mabel. She instantly fell in love with you, and gushed about you every moment she could. She begged and pleaded with Dipper to make you a sweater. He eventually relented and you’re now anxiously waiting to see what she would make for you. For now though, you're happy with gorging yourself on breakfast instead of being buried several feet in the ground.

Dipper has a notepad in hand, pen in the other. He has a look of eagerness in his eyes and you know exactly why. He was curious about where you came from, how you were created, where your author was...You don’t think you’ll be much help. What little you can remember from before you were buried is all but a blur. There are brief images of things you did here and there, but nothing concrete. It’s nothing but a confusing mesh of voices and events that don’t quite match up. It doesn’t help that so much time had passed since everything happened, either. Thirty long years had taken their toll in many ways, but by far the worst effect was on your memory.

Dipper clicked his pen rapidly, seemingly out of habit. He continued to write down any immediate thoughts he had about you, your eyes, which seemed much too yellow to be natural. Your hair, which matched the thick leather in which you were bound while as a book. Your skin, which seems to be tattooed with strange letters and markings from head to toe. You knew you must be one hell of a sight, especially when you were wearing your heavy coat that covered your hands and went down to your knees. It made you look bigger, it made you feel confident.

But being buried under the ground for so long does not do well on a book cover, so your beloved coat had taken a toll. Mabel had convinced you to let her borrow it for a small while, so she could fix it, make it look beautiful again. You had reluctantly agreed, and now you were wearing a grey shirt with blue pajama bottoms. The pants had humored you, for they were covered in tiny pictures of baseballs and soccer balls. It was much different than your usual get-up, and you found this to be quite humorous. 

The clothes you were wearing were apparently hand-me-downs from Dipper, when he was eleven, as told by Mabel. Despite being an older teen, possibly even an adult, you simply can’t remember your exact age, your frame is much too small. You were incomplete. You knew you were. There was not an inch of you that wasn’t covered with letters and numbers and other odd symbols, but you knew there was more. Of course there were pages missing, and some not even filled out while in book form. But that wasn’t all of it. 

There were others just like you, and you remember speaking with them, calling out to them, but they never replied. Thirty long years and your brothers had ignored you. You don’t know where they are, or what they’re doing. If they’d tried calling to you at all over the years, you hadn’t heard them. There had been nothing but silence in your small, crowded grave. Something must have happened to them. That’s just one part of the puzzle that’s missing. 

So you weren’t able to answer all of Dipper’s questions. They either were too painful to look back on or you just couldn’t remember. He didn’t blame you, he never did. He truly was your saving grace, or maybe you just felt that way because he was the first face you saw after years and years of being alone. But despite all that happened in the past, sitting here at this table, in the present, with two people you could tell adore you by your side, and a steaming plate of waffles in front of you, you thought nothing could be better. 

\---

“So is that all that you can remember?” he asked. You nodded, curled up on Dipper’s bed, answering his questions to the best of your ability. He set his notebook down and sighed. You couldn’t give him much, your memory was just so muddled. You felt like a disappointment. He must have sensed your self-doubt and put his hand on your shoulder. “Hey, it’s not your fault. Someone probably messed with your memories at some point.” You nodded again, feeling a bit better, but still disappointed that you couldn’t help more. You couldn’t even remember your real name for Christ’s sake. 

You had discovered your memory loss was more extreme than you thought when you first became your human form again. Dipper had pulled you out of that hole, looked through you, showed you to his sister, and took you home. You had no idea what was going on, you were still amazed to see sunlight again. He laid you on his dresser, and went back downstairs for dinner. Imagine his shock when he comes back to see a rather boyish grown man with bags under his eyes and coat in ruins crying on his bed. It had just been too much. He asked you what your name was, but you couldn’t respond, because you didn’t know. So he just nicknamed you what was on your cover. “Three.” 

Dipper hadn’t told the old man that goes through the house about you yet. You had been told that he was the twin’s great uncle, who they liked to call “Grunkle Stan.” They didn’t know how to show you to him, so all of you agreed it to be best that you stay up in their room when he’s around and they feed you when he’s not. You didn’t need to eat, but it sure felt nice. 

You were yanked from your thoughts as Dipper turned off the light and started to crawl under the covers. “It’s alright, man. We’ll try again tomorrow.” You gave him a half-hearted smile and jumped off his bed. You didn’t really like to sleep, it reminded you of being buried, but Dipper had insisted that you could snuggle with him while in book form during the night. Even though the thought of being confined as a book was still disturbing to you, Dipper’s presence made it bearable. Dipper rubbed his eyes before suddenly opening them to the sound of a book being dropped on the floor. You had converted back, ready for him to pick you back up and cuddle you. He reached down and grabbed one of your corners, before smoothing out your cover and watching as the gold hand glinted in the moonlight coming through the window, monocle dangling at your side. 

“My lovely number Three.” he said quietly, a small smile tugging at his lips. He thought you were wonderful, so mysterious and cryptic. You were his favorite thing. Really, you were quite dangerous and there was probably a reason you were in the ground. But to him, you were his lovely number Three, and nothing was better than that. 

Soon Mabel walked through the door as well, before quietly closing it behind her. She stepped over to her brother’s bed, floorboards creaking as she went, before kissing him atop the head and telling him goodnight. Then she leaned down and kissed you too, which, if a human at that very moment, would’ve made you beet-red. You remained how you were, however, and she returned to her own bed. And soon silence fell upon the shack.

You began to drift off yourself, feeling a deep sensation of sleep overcoming you. There was a small tickling in the back of your mind, but you ignored it and surrendered yourself to exhaustion. But not before a small voice in the back of your mind whispered:

“Drei.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so some of the contents of this chapter contradict the events in the previous chapter. The first chapter was honestly just a tester for the writing style as well as something to kick off the writing process. We'll be fixing this later, but for now you can just imagine whichever version better.


End file.
